Every single time I pour out a half drunk cup of cold coffee, I am reminded of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Each and every time, I become Francie in her belief that this is what rich people do; to waste coffee is a luxurious act of defiance against personal poverty. I didn’t grow up like Francie but I hate waste, so it’s become a conscious act of extravagance.
I first read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when I was about ten; I had a VERY active imagination combined with an overabundance of empathy and I would take on the persona–I BECAME the character I most identified with–and so I became poor Francie.
Just like I became Laura Ingalls Wilder in Little House on the Prairie or Anne Frank or Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden.
In my case, these multiple personalities weren’t anything more than trying on a new dress or pair of shoes; I always returned to my own authentic self–wolf lover, nature lover, underdog defender, wearer of rose-colored glasses—but it was part of the process of individuation to slip on these other personas and feel as if I was walking in another’s shoes to learn about how other people live and think.
Mom Katie Nolan believes that Francie is entitled to throw her coffee down the drain if she wishes, saying that it’s good for poor people like them to be able to waste something.
“There was a special Nolan idea about the coffee. It was their one great luxury. Mama made a big potful each morning and reheated it for dinner and supper and it got stronger as the day wore on. It was an awful lot of water and very little coffee but mama put a lump of chicory in it which made it taste strong and bitter. Each one was allowed three cups a day with milk. Other times you could help yourself to a cup of black coffee anytime you felt like it. Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.
Neeley and Francie loved coffee but seldom drank it. Today, as usual, Neeley let his coffee stand black and ate his condensed milk spread on bread. He sipped a little of the black coffee for the sake of formality. Mama poured out Francie’s coffee and put the milk in it even though she knew that the child wouldn’t drink it.”
“Francie loved the smell of coffee and the way it was hot. As she ate her bread and meat, she kept one hand curved about the cup enjoying its warmth. From time to time, she’d smell the bitter sweetness of it. That was better than drinking it. At the end of the meal, it went down the sink.”
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn–Betty Smith
Did you ever read this classic? What did you like about it?
It’s quiet this morning. The birds are singing and it’s the perfect time to practice self-care.
I like to take whatever existing store bought mask (not the kind we wear to protect ourselves and others from Covid-19) I have and embellish it with my own ingredients.
This is a Kale + Niacin gel mask that’s the perfect consistency to DIY.
I got inspired by the ingredients of my yummy vegan smoothie recipe and decided to put the same ingredients on my face as I did inside my body.
Inner and outer beauty!
1 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp.organic spirulina
1tbsp. organic moringa powder
1 tbsp.organic wheat grass powder
1 tbsp. matcha green tea powder
1tsp. turmeric oil
3 or 4 tbsp. of any existing masks you might have (OR you don’t need to… just add 2 teaspoons water and 2 teaspoons coconut or olive oil.)
Combine all ingredients
Spread all over your freshly washed face either using fingers or a foundation brush.
Leave on for 20 minutes.
Wash with warm water and feel the difference in your skin.
Moisturize immediately.
I save any leftover mask in the refrigerator for a couple of days.
I saw an abundance of crows; not sure why, but quite a few of them joined me today.
Hello, friend!
This sign was posted a few blocks away; not a very nice person! I hope she’s caught and the dog is found unharmed.
Poor grammar; incorrect use of “they’re”…should have been “their”, but I’ll allow it this time.
When I got to the beach, I was astonished to observe how many people were walking so close to each other in public and absolutely defied the “Wear a Mask” order.
I encountered no one during my walk but I wore a mask when I crossed the street to stop at the restroom. I observed many non-compliant people huddled together on the seawall and sidewalk, pretty much 90% were NOT wearing masks, so I turned right around and went home. My own mask didn’t seem like enough protection and I didn’t feel like yelling at them.
They are not being good neighbors or visitors to our city.
The County of San Diego requires face coverings to be worn anywhere in public where you could come within 6 feet of someone you don’t live with. Face coverings should be worn in addition to, not instead of, all of the other health precautions.
At last, a couple photos of early morning surf before I walked back.
In the quietest moments, your most challenging thoughts will bubble to the surface. Do not distract yourself from them. Embrace, examine and send them off to The Universe to be transformed. That, my love, is called healing! ~ Creator __________________________________________________________________________
Reblogged from one of my favorite writers, Jennifer Farley, The Creator Writings. She’s a ThetaHealing Practitioner and Instructor.
Even in SoCal, on this Autumnal Equinox, leaves do fall.
Fall, Leaves, Fall
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me Fluttering from the autumn tree. I shall smile when wreaths of snow Blossom where the rose should grow; I shall sing when night’s decay Ushers in a drearier day.
The term Wetiko is a Cree term (windigo in Ojibway, wintiko in Powhatan) which, to quote Forbes, refers to “an evil person or spirit who terrorizes other creatures by means of terrible evil acts.”[ii] Wetikos are the human instruments for the transpersonal ‘spirit of evil’ to terrorize the world.
There seems to be a collective query rising up from the huddled masses of humanity who search for answers to everything from Trump to climate change, deadly natural disasters to senseless murders, and a pervasive lack of empathy and compassion.
Is there an epidemic of broken, undeveloped frontal lobes, of dysfunctional, maladjusted, deteriorating, and infected amygdalas?
Narcissism and Cluster B psychopathy run rampant in our culture, feeding on those who still have that innate ability to feel empathy and compassion, who possess a real soul and a kind spirit.
Those dark and toxic parasitic Wetiko entities are cannibalistic, predatory, soul-LESS, selfish, and hostile: a cancer of the soul; a shapeshifter.
How sad.
“Just as viruses or malware infect a computer and program it to self-destruct, Wetiko programs the human biocomputer to think and behave in self-destructive ways.
Covertly operating through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, Wetiko renders people oblivious to their own madness, compelling them to act against their own best interests.
People under its thrall can, like someone in the throes of an addiction or in a state of trauma, unwittingly create the very problem they are trying to resolve, clinging desperately to the thing that is torturing and destroying them.
People taken over by Wetiko are suffering from an autoimmune disease of the psyche. In autoimmune deficiency syndrome, the immune system of the organism perversely attacks the very life it is trying to protect. In trying to live, it destroys life, ultimately destroying even itself. In the same way, once Wetiko has insinuated itself into a living entity, it acts like a perverted antibody, treating the wholesome parts of the system as cancerous tumors to be exterminated.
From Psychology Today
This problem is being collectively acted out on the world stage. Humans are destroying the biosphere of the planet upon which we all depend for our survival.
Wetiko is at the bottom of the seemingly never-ending destruction we are wreaking on this biosphere. One example is the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, the lungs of the planet. Another example is the terminator seeds that are genetically engineered not to reproduce a second generation, forcing farmers to buy new seeds and making life impossible for many poor farmers. If the planet were seen as an organism, and people seen as cells in this organism, it would be as if these cells had become cancerous or parasitic and had turned on the healthy cells, destroying the very organism of which they themselves were a part.
Our species appears to be enacting a mass ritual suicide on a global scale. Paul Levy “Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil” Quest 102.4 (Fall 2014): pg. 146-151.
Also from Paul Levy… Wetiko disease is an expression of the convincing illusion of the separate self gone wild. Bewitched by the intrinsic projective tendencies of their own mind, full-blown Wetikos are unconsciously doing the very thing they are reacting to while simultaneously accusing other people of doing it.
Projecting the shadow onto others, they will accuse others of projecting the shadow onto them. To use an extreme, but prototypical example, it is like someone screaming that you’re killing them as they kill you.
If their insanity is reflected back to them, they think it is the mirror that is insane. Suffering from a form of psychic blindness that believes itself to be sightedness, full-blown Wetikos project out their own unconscious blindness and imagine that others, instead of themselves, are the ones who are not seeing.
Governed by the insane, self-perpetuating logic of fear and paranoia, those taken over by the disease fear that if they don’t attack and rule over others, they are in danger of being attacked and ruled over themselves.
In their convoluted, upside-down, flawless illogic, Wetikos’ act to their own projections in the world as if they objectively exist and are other than themselves, thinking that they themselves have nothing to do with creating that to which they are reacting.
Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com
In Wetiko disease, the psyche takes the ‘terror’ that haunts it from within, and in its attempt to master it, unwittingly becomes taken over by it, thus becoming an instrument of terror in the world.
We have then become the thing we most feared, ‘creatures of the European nightmare world,’ as we psychologically terrorize ourselves, as well as terrorizing the world at large.
Because full-blown Wetikos are soul murderers who continually recreate the ongoing process of killing their own soul, they are reflexively compelled to do this to others; for what the soul does to itself, it can’t help but do to others.
In a perverse inversion of the golden rule, instead of treating others how they would like to be treated, Wetikos do unto others what was done unto them. The Wetiko is simply a living link in a timeless, vampiric lineage of abuse.
Full-blown Wetikos induce and dream up others to experience what it is like to be the part of themselves which they have split off from and denied, and are thus not able to consciously experience – the part of themselves that has been abused and vampirized. In playing this out, Wetikos are transmitting and transferring their own depraved state of inner deadness to others in a perverse form of trying to deal with their own suffering.
Paradoxically, Wetikos both try to destroy others’ light, as it reminds them of what they’ve killed in themselves, while simultaneously trying to appropriate the light for themselves.
The disease itself is now demanding that we pay attention to it, or it will kill us.”
“An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind”. – Ghandi
Native American author and philosopher Jack Forbes further adds:
“This disease, this Wetiko (cannibal) psychosis, is the greatest epidemic sickness known to man.” We, as a species, are in the midst of a massive psychic epidemic, a virulent collective psychosis that has been brewing in the cauldron of humanity’s psyche from the beginning of time.
Like a fractal, Wetiko operates on multiple dimensions simultaneously — intra-personally (within individuals), inter-personally (between ourselves), as well as collectively (as a species). “Cannibalism,” in Forbes’s words, “is the consuming of another’s life for one’s own private purpose or profit.”
I don’t read much science fiction…I’m a chicklit girl, but my research about Wetiko led me to this article about the (deceased) sci-fi author, Phillip K. Dick (you might know him as the author of Bladerunner.)
This isn’t the post I had planned for Saturday but we have all heard the devastating news.
On Rosh Hashanah, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Supreme Court Justice, died at the age of 87 from metastatic pancreatic cancer.
I think a lot of us had the same first thoughts; “Oh no, not HER” “Not now.””NOOO!!!”
We surely don’t need her gone, not now, not during this shitshow of a year that 2020 has become.
Hearing that horrible news (tragic for her family but tragic for our country and democracy, too) brought me back to the morning my mom (the original Charlotte) died of the same disease, metastatic pancreatic cancer.
Thanks to medical advancements, RBG was able to live a lot longer after diagnosis than my mom.
Hearing about her death brought up all those same traumatic feelings of loss that I felt when I found my mom had died. She lived with us and we had cared for her during her illness with the help of a great hospice.
I had checked on her at around 5am and she was fine, not in distress, still asleep, so I did a little cleaning and made my son’s breakfast so it’d be ready for him when he woke up ‘cos it was a school day. I don’t know what prompted me to check on her again so soon, but I did. She was still in the same position; she LOOKED like she was asleep, but there was a subtle difference. I had never seen a dead person in my entire 32 years on this earth, but I knew. I knew.
I checked her carotid artery and called the hospice nurse. I woke up Angel Boy (almost 7 years old) and managed to tell him all the right things. Hospice had suggested that I ask him if he’d like to kiss his grandma goodbye, so I did. And he did. That pretty much broke me, but I’m a stoic girl and you wouldn’t know I was broken. I can break on the inside but you won’t see it. Things had to be done so I did what needed to be done. I always do.
I miss my mom. Forever.
But this is about Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a brilliant woman whose entire life was inspirational. Her loss is an epic tragedy.
About RBG’s life, the film “On The Basis of Sex” featured a song written and performed by Kesha. Here’s an acoustic version. It needs to be the anthem of our revolution. First we mourn, then we fight.
Here Comes the Change
One day I’ll be gone The world will keep turning I hope I leave this place Better than I found it Oh it’s hard, I know it’s hard To be the lightning in the dark Hold on tight you’ll be alright You know it’s time Here comes the change We’re comin’ of age This is not a phase Here comes, here comes, the change Is it a crazy thought? That if I had a child I hope they live to see the day That everyone’s equal Oh it’s hard I know it’s hard To be the right inside the wrong Hold on tight we’ll be alright You know it’s time Oh here comes the change Oh we’re comin’ of age This is not a phase Here comes here comes the change Hope there’ll come a time when we We can live in and die free I hope…
Maybe because I loved the fairy garden I sent Angel Boy, or maybe it was the smokey skies that made being outside harmful to my asthma, but I had to find an indoor project or it was going to affect my mental health, too.
I thought to myself, what could I craft without having to buy any new supplies?
Pinterest and the internet offers a plethora of ideas by amazing people.
There are step-by-step videos for nearly EVERYTHING DIY.
My first attempt was a craft stick (popsicle stick) door. I have a package of 200 sticks that I was saving for projects with AB and I always have glue and paint. PERFECT.
The door was so aDORable with addition of the button for a doorknob that I painted gold, so I felt confident building the bench. Also easy and also way cool. I painted it white and added a touch of my own…miniature pillows, each stuffed with 1/2 a cotton ball.
The little tables were made out of pieces of broken costume jewelry glued to a wine cork. (Yes, I do save everything.)
Check out the little broom I made with a toothpick.
I’m also obsessed with windchimes and mobiles (another post) and came up with the brilliant idea of a mini-mobile made out of an old costume jewelry ring. I have no idea where the ring came from, but it was there in the box of broken things.
I attached tiny seashells and gems using silver jewelry wire and fishing line.
Not perfect, but not bad for a first attempt, right? Next, I’m going to try to build the picnic table.
I didn’t really want to do a step-by-step DIY tutorial because mine wouldn’t be nearly as detailed and precise as the ones that are already out there, but here’s a few photos of the process:
I think I might attempt to pierce the veil between worlds and open that door. It was especially magical last night when the solar lights came on and sparkled the glass rock pathway.
Just a hungry scrub jay hanging out on the deck. They LOVE raw peanuts. I still find a few empty shells hidden in the garden nine years later..
One of my favorite photos from September 2011.
First there was one, then another, and for a while, there were about four jays who hung out and let me hand feed them.
Did you know that scrub jays are very intelligent?
From Wiki: Recent research has suggested that western scrub jays, along with several other corvids, are among the most intelligent of animals. The brain-to-body mass ratio of adult scrub jays rivals that of chimpanzees and cetaceans, and is dwarfed only by that of humans. Scrub jays are also the only non-primate or non-dolphin shown to plan ahead for the future (known as metacognition), which was previously thought of as a uniquely human trait Other studies have shown that they can remember locations of over 200 food caches, as well as the food item in each cache and its rate of decay. To protect their caches from pilfering conspecifics, scrub jays will choose locations out of sight of their competitors, or re-cache caches once they are alone, suggesting that they can take into account the perspective of others. According to new research from the University of California @ Davis, scrub jays also summon others to screech over the body of a dead jay. The birds’ cacophonous “funerals” can last for up to half an hour.
This is a Kale + Niacin gel mask that’s the perfect consistency to DIY. 
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 